I've been back to work for over a year now, and I'll have to be honest... it took almost that long to get in the swing of things... I've went from partime to fulltime to fulltime but part at home. Since the end of December, I finally felt all the knobs come into place.

And then ds was sick for two weeks with a wicked stomach virus and work blew up in my face (I'm a mfg engineer, so when a 3.5 billion mfg plant is stopped cold for things you own... It's hard to just stay home while the kid is sick). So for two weeks I hung in there... home in the day with ds... worked evenings/nights.

And then it was all over... but it really wasn't cause as ds lost ~ 4lbs... he was pretty intent in gaining all of them back... for the last two weeks he's been waking up at midnight... "I hungee" Oh why oh why did I ever worry about him talking?

I had thought I had caught up on my sleep this weekend... but so far this week, I've paid the wrong credit card, realized I paid the wrong credit card last month (in the beginning of this fiasco)... I could go off on a whole post why credit card companies are so unhelpful... $14.95 to pay over phone? 6 days to sign up via web?
Oh well... I guess dh will find out the hard way in his hour long commute when he can't buy gas

I've forgotten either my pager or work id -- major pains in the butt to forget -- every day this week, and somehow managed to get to day care one day with out shoes for ds and without his mittens (I know it's May... but he still wears them a major crisis. Plus I've got a bday card in front of me that it a month late for my best friend in the whole world who I haven't talked to in three months.

And I have to go to my inlaws this weekend for sil's baby's baptism. I'll have to hear over and over again how her baby just wasn't getting enough milk bfing cause he wanted to bf more frequently than every four hours. So now peace in the near future.

Hey, you're living inside my head, tho' my office is in the basement...

Just keep repeating your mantra, and know that it will get better. I always figure give myself as much recovery time as the actual crisis lasts...either work crisis or family...only THEN do I allow myself to start to worry, decide I have early Alzheimer's rather than stress, you know the drill.

Too bad that you have to hear sil's lame excuses while you're still in the recovery mode, tho'.

And remind yourself that unpaid bills or not, you got through 2 crises!! And everything's still standing! You are WOMAN! and all that.

It's hard when you are working on such a fragile balance. When something throws it off, it feels like it takes forever to recover. I feel your pain. I am just counting the weeks until my second trimester, hoping to get some energy back and stop being sick, so my "productivity" can come back up to where it was before I got pregnant. Isn't that funny? I'm being more productive than ever, when you think about it! But my work is behind, my house is a mess, I am always behind on cutting fingernails and bathing ds, and the bills are piled up for me to take care of them. Ugh. And I am not yet 9 weeks!

Good news! I managed to get to work this morning with everything... even my lunch which I've forgotten to put in the car every day this week. A good thing too as we're having a dept lunch today which btw I'm in charge of food... You'd think things would have clicked.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I threw my cell phone away on Tuesday while refueling and cleaning out the car and managed to get home from the grocery store missing two bags-- of course the two bags that have the $10 roast and my $12 bottle of cetaphil.
Don't worry nobody will notice my raging eczema... they'll be too busy looking at my hairy legs as somehow I managed to put on a skirt this morning clearly above the hair line (NOTE: I'm hairier than 90% of Italian men and haven't shaved certain parts of my leg in a year) with sheer pantyhose... btw.. they do not make my legs any more attractive.

I've even taken the time to do yoga twice this week hoping it would bring me peace and focus. GRRRRRRRRRR......

I'm glad I could provide humor to everyone's lives. Just writing it all down allowed me to laugh instead of cry.

While I'd love to say the end of my week went better.....it didn't. That informal lunch meeting ended up being in front of my new management which btw, I met a week ago, and had no idea he was my boss... I babbled for a very long hour. Good news as I'm trying to get a new job in the company, the usual 3 month wait, I'm sure now will be expediated!

Then Friday while lying under a vat of acid performing a maintenance procedure, I had such severe back muscle spasms (from who knows what?) somebody had to pull me out by my feet. I turned off all my gadgets, and took a five hour lunch after that .

I"VE NEVER HAD SO MUCH HAPPEN TO ME IN ONE WEEK!

Thank god my husband took pity on me and made the inlaw visit a grueling day trip. And today we got a puppy

indigomama: were you kidding when you asked "who knows from what?" about your back spasms? 'Cause I can tell you--it's probably STRESS!!

You need a nice massage and some pampering...

but you got a puppy instead LOL oh, well. no rest for the weary at your house...
hope the new little one sleeps well and doesn't miss his mama too much...(OT: In college, we fostered a roommates' dog's puppies; mama was hit by a car; really prepared me for parenting--those late night pitiful barks. If I could get out of bed as a 19-yr-old partier to feed a tiny puppy a bottle I could roll over for my darlin', KWIM?)